...was meeting with Gen. Tommy Franks, Centcom commander, to plot the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government, according to the now declassified talking points agenda from the sessions. The talking points suggest that Rumsfeld and his team were grappling with a tricky issue: “How [to] start?” the war. In other words, what would the pretext be? Various scenarios were outlined: “US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks?” reads one of them. “Dispute over WMD inspections?” reads another. “Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

November 2001 was two months after 9-11.....and 1 year and 4 months until the U.S. military invaded Iraq. The question of "how to start" the invasion of Iraq......what pretense could be given to justify attacking a sovereign, non-threatening country....was a big concern of Don Rumsfeld less than 10 weeks after 9-11. Even then, 16 months before our nation launched an attack on Iraq, a foundation of lies was being constructed.

Each one of the bogus talking point justifications for attacking Iraq by Rumsfeld to Franks in November 2001 were repeated, ad nauseum, by Bush administration officials for the next 16 months. “How [to] start?”, “US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks?” “Dispute over WMD inspections?” “Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

My point here is that 16 months before President Bush ordered the unprovoked military attack on Iraq....the lies to justify such a crime to the America people were being established by Donald Rumsfeld. Those very lies were then raised and repeated for 16 continuous months in front of the American people by Bush administration officials and the media which served him at the time.

I bring this up not because we're approaching the 10th anniversary of the Iraq crime...but in order to illustrate how calculated lying and deception by government and media leaders is done successfully.

Five years ago the U.S. financial industry collapsed under the weight of its own recklessness and greed, then bailed out with government loans to the tune of almost $800 billion. The recession which immediately followed is still with us, high unemployment and lack of consumer demand still aggravating the downturn.

Traditionally, historically....in recessionary periods, government steps in to fill the consumption void left by lack of consumer demand. But despite the fact that the collapse removed $10 trillion of net worth out of the national economy....only three GOP senators would go along with $787 billion in stimulus beginning in 2009. You do the math.

But just like what happened in less than two months after 9-11....Rumsfeld establishing talking point lies of mass deception in order to gin up public approval to attack Iraq.....so too immediately following our financial industry collapse.

What became the talking point lies following our worst financial decline in 60 years? National debt and deficits. Supply side economics' WMD-in-Iraq equivalents. Concern over national debt and deficits.....basically non-existent during the Bush double-the-debt years....became the all encompassing talking point lie.

The new post-collapse talking point lie became....oh my god, the debt and the deficit will eat us alive if we don't cut a whole bunch of government spending right now. National debt clocks emerged blinking red.....the bond vigilantes were coming to destroy all of us in our beds because of the .......DEBT, because of the DEFICIT. Be afraid, be very afraid of those nation-destroying, WMD debt and deficit bombs.

Post financial collapse, deception artists in government and media created talking point lies, just like Rumsfeld and the Bushies did after 9-11 concerning Iraq. Those lies......that the national debt and deficit posed an imminent threat to national security....just like Rumsfeld's deceptions in November 2001,.....are not true. It has been four years now since Very Serious People have been warning about the imminence of the smoking gun/ mushroom cloud of bond vigilantes who are on their way to shred the value of our debt instruments.

Four years of mushroom cloud warnings....any day now, you'll see.....those bond vigilantes will plunder the country...and it's all because of DEBT, DEBT, DEBT and DEFICITS.

The vigilantes have yet to show up, U.S. T-bonds are still in demand and interest rates are still at historic lows....yet elected and media experts in Washington are now reaching a fever pitch, consumed by their own lies over the imminent danger, danger, danger of deficits and debt.

Rumsfeld and his PNAC neo-cons wanted to establish U.S. military bases inside the middle east from whence our military could project U.S. power throughout the region, keeping China at bay. That's why Rumsfeld and the Bushies lied about some make-believe imminent threat from Iraq.

Why have elected officials and their media servants trumpeted a bogus threat over the national debt and deficit for the past four years?

For the end game of lowering tax rates on America's wealthiest and most powerful. That's the brass ring. That's Saddam's personal, ivory handled, sidearm...so to speak.

Elected officials and their willing and eager media servants have been lying to the American people, misinforming the American people over the imminent threat of anthrax-laced deficits and debt.....for the purpose of forcing Congress to cut government spending while unemployment is at 8% and clear the way for "broadening the tax base and lowering tax rates."